Housing is increasingly being viewed as a commodity to be sold to the
highest bidder, forgetting that it is, most importantly, a human right.
Adequate and
affordable housing featured as one of the President’s key ‘Big Four’
agenda items, an important commitment given the state of housing in
Kenya.
Housing is more than four
walls and a roof: It is the basis of st
ability and security for an
individual or family. It is the centre of our social, emotional and,
sometimes, economic lives.
A home should be a sanctuary; a place to live in peace, security and dignity.
But
housing is increasingly being viewed as a commodity to be sold to the
highest bidder, forgetting that it is, most importantly, a human right.
Under
international law, to be adequately housed means having secure tenure —
not having to worry about being evicted or having your home or lands
taken away.
SERVICES
It means living somewhere that is in keeping with your culture, with access to appropriate services.
However,
forced evictions have become the norm with little attention being paid
to its effect on the livelihoods and dignity of evictees. It is no
longer seen as a rights issue.
Too
often, violations of the right to housing occur with impunity. The
recent inhumanely eviction of the Sengwer from Embobut Forest shows how
citizens can be disenfranchised of their property rights despite a law
and policies against such.
Thousands are visibly and invisibly evicted from Nairobi’s Deep Sea informal settlement.
They
include families in crammed shacks without the most basic of services,
who may be evicted at a moment’s notice, often for a second or third
time.
EVICTEES
Then
there is the aspect of evictions rarely mentioned, let alone tackled:
Criminalisation, penalisation, discrimination and stigmatisation.
Evictees
are often denied access to basic services such as water or sanitation
and even penalised for engaging in activities necessary for their
survival, such as eating and sleeping in public spaces.
Treated
like lesser beings, they are sometimes forced to establish ‘homes’ in
open spaces and do their ablution in the open as if it’s the norm.
Understanding
housing in its narrowest sense naturally results in narrow policy
responses, which often focus on construction of more houses.
This
is the approach the government seems to have taken with its plan to
build a million houses for the low-income cadre, an approach that
previously failed for the urban poor.
Though
rational in intent, this ‘quick fix’ approach ignores underlying causes
of lack of housing — such as inhumane evictions and lack of secure land
tenure, stigmatisation and criminalisation of evictees — and sidesteps a
critical analysis of preventative measures.
To broaden the response to housing and effectively address it, we need a paradigm shift.
HUMAN RIGHT
We
have to move away from an exclusive focus on the individual
circumstances of the lack of adequate housing to one that recognises its
structural causes and individualised dimensions.
If
housing were approached as a human right, then any form of eviction
would be recognised as failure by the State to prevent and address it.
This shift in perspective moves us from blaming the victims and focuses
attention on State (in)action.
Such
an approach would expose the many root causes of lack of adequate
housing. These include the State abandoning its social protection
responsibility in the context of unprecedented urbanisation and failure
to adequately regulate real estate markets and land distribution.
If
the President is serious about housing, I expect zero evictions and a
moratorium on the inhumane act, enactment of the housing law and
implementation of the enacted laws and policies.
I
also expect adequate budgetary allocation from public coffers — not
donor funds — towards upgrading of basic services and infrastructure in
the informal settlements.
Ms Vata, advocate of the High Court of Kenya, is executive director at Hakijamii. pauline@hakijamii.com.
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